I agree on population, except...politicians have made so many promises to deliver goodies to future citizens, that failure to grow population will literally cause a revolution when the money runs out as the the population seriously slows or sinks. Hence the desire by some politicians to want to let in foreigners without going through any supervised immigration process.
This is precisely what's happening in the West with state-run healthcare and poverty assistance.
The endemic population in the West has been shrinking for roughly 20 years now, with growth rates slowing markedly since around the 1980s. As affluence goes up, birth rates go down. In order for a welfare state to not collapse under the burden of its own weight it must have a perpetually increasing population. This is why most Western countries now have an "immigration problem" which is largely ignored and/or accepted, despite the social ills it causes in turn.
Since these governments depend upon a Ponzi scheme for their continued existence, a revolution may not be such a bad idea for everyone involved (including the immigrants).
If you have a problem with population density, please. See: Muslim countries, China, and India. The endemic population in the West and Russia has been dropping steadily (and in some cases, rapidly) for the past 20 years. For instance, at the current rate, Italy and Russia will have no significant 'native Italians' or 'native Russians' left within several generations (both under a birth rate of 1.0 per female).
In real life we have millions of years; because somewhere between 50 and 200 it'll become increasingly uneconomical to extract said fossil fuels such that alternatives are actually cheaper. The first it's likely to happen to is oil. In 50 years we're likely to let most of it sit in the ground because pulling it out is too expensive except for certain scientific testing.
And in 50 years, they will cap the wells they are using un-cap the previously capped wells which weren't producing as rapidly as they had, and start using them again for another 50+ years. There are more wells capped (which will likely produce again at higher yields than previously) today than there are wells in use.
You are seeing a marked decrease in environmental interest. Look at China and India.
You're not exactly helping your cause there, buddy. Do we also have rare earth, iron, salt, etc. shortages? No, not really. This is, well, China and India we're talking about, here. China and India are using those, too. What we have is a shortage of cheap oil, which is a significantly different situation largely because China and India are ramping up their industrialization.
And, again, it's China and India, home of the largest slave/slum/underclass populations in the world for the past several millennia, where disposal of human waste in the streets is still common and accepted.
Like wind turbines, hydro power is kind of a dead end. It requires a lot of effort to maintain and only really makes much sense on the scale where you are really harming the environment around it.
Not true.
This may be true for the larger hydro installations around the world, but it it is by no means true of them all. I know it's true for the Three Gorges dam in China (partially due to how they operate it, but that's China for you), and may be true for other dams, such as Hoover which has a very high flowrate at its spillway, through the tail water.
Yes, constructing and initiating a hydroelectric dam will be 'destructive' to the environment around it. It doesn't harm the environment, though: it changes it. It's arguably much less destructive than a naturally occurring spillway. You may know them as waterfalls.
Additionally, dam construction can help environmental diversity. It doesn't necessarily hurt it. A river prone to seasonal flooding and land destruction (as occurred annually prior to the construction of the US dam system along the Missouri and Mississipi) can have the spring surges regulated to reduce the number and frequency of actual flooding along its length. Those dams can be converted to produce hydroelectric power where they are not already doing so - and there are quite a few of them which are still just dams.
Ecological benefits (change, not destruction) from dams is pretty significant. It creates more marshland acreage (always a diverse habitat of wildlife), provides more variety in waterways, reduces river-length erosion, and so on. The hydroelectric potential of a dam is almost all a bonus. Dams are a good idea if you want to live anywhere near a major river or have periodic seasonal flooding of any sort.
Consider, for a second: the New York Reservoir System has something close to a trillion gallons of water. These are all resevoirs - man made lakes on natural water sources (natural springs, rivers) which have been in use for over 100 years at this point. They don't (as far as I know) harness hydroelectric, they've just got a dozen or so spillways per lake (depending on size). That is a lot of wasted power which, while not significant on the grander scale, would help none the less.
There are many areas which would benefit substantially from hydroelectric power, simply because it would provide them with the excuse of derming their rivers and making a reservoir with a dam they could seasonally regulate - which happens to produce hydroelectric.
Hydro-electric is, per kWh, very cheap. The majority of the state of South Dakota is powered by a the 4 hydro dams on the Missouri river, the Oahe being the largest. We pay half (or less) the power rate of places like California. As of 2011 it was still something like.06$ per kWh (it's gone up a bit due to being sold out of state, I believe). While the initial construction of a dam is surely very expensive, it's a very wise long-term investment.
It's entirely possible that their vulnerability could be fixed and they end up with nothing they can use for a while
Not really. Most cell phones don't get updates, and even when they do they don't have all the fixes or a very fast turnaround. Mobile phone security is still very 1990s.
Meanwhile, you can now piece together a PC from 5-year-old parts from the garage and have a PC that's capable of playing games better than the 360.
You're forgetting that the 360 was meh for hardware when it came out. A $400 PC will run circles around it today, as will a $400 PC from several years ago.
Managers will then end up with cowardly people with no skills who will lie to them when the job is 30% done but they're not going to work on it anymore, they're behind schedule, or it looks done to the uninitiated but hasn't actually been completed.
If you're telling your employees to do things in a specific timeframe, you'd better have a damn good reason for doing so - like being able to do so yourself. Managers should only ask how long it takes, and then tell them "Make it so", with there being absolutely no ground for deviation from this rule unless the employer/boss knows what the fuck they're talking about (BTDT).
I've never had a hands-off manager. The direct ones are idiots and don't listen. Honestly, I've found that things have generally run better when my bosses haven't been around, to the concensus of everyone.
Agreed -sorta. The female bosses are more likely to hold a grudge, more likely to mistreat people on how much they "like" them and not actual performance, and show favorites. The direct, no-nonsense, to-the-point technical person does not work well with these people as their bosses.
The male bosses are more likely to be demanding and imperial, but they're also a lot more concise and to the point as to what they want. They'll take you standing toe/toe, but you better be able and willing to hold your own. Submissive, non-assertive types are seen as under-performers regardless of what they actually do.
However, I've had a boss with a hormonal imbalance. He was growing tits involuntarily, and horribly moody. He behaved more like a woman (and a very poor boss at that).
Granted, I should note that I've never actually had a good boss (but I hear they really do exist). But I guess that's probably par for the course.
Every single NATO-organized operation has not only been a significant failure, but human rights violations have been atrocious. This is more true with the smaller operations involving soldiers from non-Western countries in other non-Western countries. Complete... cluster... fuck.
MS lost a golden opportunity here to emphasize the "why", whether true or not. "We don't want you to buy their products because they're overpriced and are not good use of company assets".
They're missing one important entry: hard drive clatter. Sure, you can still hear it if you get close to the tower, or have a particular brand of drives (eg. Hitachi) which aren't as aggressively acoustically tuned.
Surely I'm not the only one who remembers being able to hear their drive(s) from the other side of the room as the machine boots up? Today's workstations positively whisper, in comparison - to the point where many people don't realize that's a device inside doing something, but just 'phantom noises'. With SSDs becoming more common, it won't be long until hard drives are relegated to the server rooms and geek dwellings.
I did what you did with MC2 as well. I seem to recall the first game had the same 'flaw'. I also had a Madcat poster (that I had screen printed myself) in my room as a teen (the CD cover from Mechwarrior II). I wonder what ever happened to that... The game intro movie to Mechwarrior 2 was the single biggest determining factor in making me a computer geek, sad to say. It was that cool, and probably more influential in my life than losing my virginity.
Believe it or not, you could do some serious damage against even the mighty Timberwolf/Madcat/MkII with something like, oh, a small body omnimech. Or even something like the Uller or Nova - they were absolutely vicious with the right pilot and terrain. I would play vs. against a good friend who would consistently beat me with the small, fast mechs regardless of what I used, and would basically decimate the Assault class mechs without me even seeing him. It was all strategy and playing the field for what it was, with human/human multiplayer.
Hell, even a Thor with the right armaments was pretty useful. Not quite as maneuverable, but the firepower you could pack in the 'missile pod' and its armor capabilities made it a good contender (as long as you could keep your back to the wall).
Bushwackers and their big brother caldronborn were pretty damn good at ambushes. They could punch a really hard hit right off with ER lasers, especially if you were teaming with someone with jammers (eg. someone with a vulture and a lot of armor)
This is going to blow up big, for both MS and TuCloud, I think. Considering the obvious intent Microsoft has with pushing Windows 8 as a service instead of a product (as they're already doing with Office 365 and will be tying the next version of Exchange), they're probably going to try to lock any competition out.
I'd not be surprised if OnLive is a project planned internally to Microsoft, and they moved it "outside" to avoid scrutiny and/or Justice Dept. probes, or something like that. The "offer" they'll give OnLive is to become a part of Microsoft, or something like it - and it'll have been planned since before OnLive first broke soil.
I've seen systems, verified backups, and duplicate backups simply fall over. Every best practice was followed, backups were taken regularly, and the backups had been verified by Industry Leading Backup Software Everyone Still Uses (arg). But the system and data on the backups could not be restored.
It eventually got fixed through some virtualized gyrations, but it took the better part of a week for the company's top engineer to figure it out.
I recently heard of a case of a sysadmin who wrote some software. He worked from home, and naturally, the software didn't directly pertain to his position. He worked a lot of overtime for his job, but because he was salaried as a sysadmin, he didn't get OT pay.
Well, the company thought it should own his software, too. So they took it from him at threat of termination.
He then took them to court for 3 years of back overtime plus interest. Considering what he'd been making and how much he was working, it was supposedly quite a lot (almost 4 figures). Because they considered his programming to be their's, the court saw fit that he wasn't truly to be classified as 'administrative' staff, and got lumped in with some CA classification allowing him overtime.
Honestly for me, the hardest part was telling family and friends, "yeah, I'm working from home, but that doesn't mean I'm not working," and getting them to accept that they can't just pop by whenever.
Then don't tell them you're working from home. Tell them you're a contractor. Contractors, for the most part, are respected as having deadlines, and (importantly) need to account for their time fiscally. It's a small distinction, but IMO working in IT is more akin to salary contractor work than it is typical salaried work. You're always behind the gun...
I am much, much more effective if I'm somewhat physically active throughout the day. Unfortunately, much of what I have to do involves sitting in a chair with ssh and an editor in front of me.
In my current job, this could be somewhat remedied, as I do have tasks in the server room. However, in the time it'd take me to get there, whatever I'm waiting for back at my desk has long since completed, meaning: something like slashdot seems more appealing.
My most productive time has been at home in my basement. My workstation is 20 feet from my workbench and 10 feet from my server closet. Another 20 feet on from my workbench is the laundry, where I could get most of everything washed, dried, and folded (my wife loved that, except I cant' fold clothes to save my life). By the time my file transfer(s), install, whatever completed, I could be back at my desk, having completed other tasks. Come 5pm, I can get up and go relax (or, likely, start another project): the chores are done, my work is done, and nothing else is pressing.
I don't recommend doing vehicle work mid-day on a work day, however. That hour long oil change turns into "I'll just get her up on the jack and rotate the tires while I'm at it" and before you know it you've broken a part and need to borrow the wife's car to get to the auto store.:P
My god. I may be speaking before my turn here ( as I may be working from home with children and a wife soon), but I'd say what those guys needed was a divorce, not to stay in an office to work.
When I was home (working a long way from there now, sadly - trying to get back), I had quite the nice setup. I had full run of the basement in our (smaller) home.
In one quarter of it, I had my workstation. I had my desk, which I'd made some time previously, a nice office chair (something cheap, but it fit me well), and a lazy boy recliner. I had a small sound-insulated closet where all my home server equipment sat, which was just next to the workstation.
In another corner, I had my workshop. I had/have everything here, from a drill press and bench vice with all the appropriate tools to an electronics test bench.
In yet another corner (subdivided by doorless walls) I had an 'empty room'. It's been in need of renovation for years and has basically become a shop. I did some vehicle body work in the room 2 winters ago.
If I got tired of sitting at the computer (distracted) I'd get up and work with metal, wood, or electronics (or prep for one of the many household projects I had elsewhere, upstairs). I could move whatever i was working on to the 'empty' room if it was too large to complete on the bench.
The best part was that I could hear my kids running and playing overhead, letting me know it was probably time for me to come out of my cave and breath some fire into their daily lives. After things were settled for the evening, I could go back down into the basement and do one thing or another. Probably the most productive year of my life, so far.
Within weeks of signing the papers, you will find yourself doing one (or more) of the following:
* laying stone or bricks * tilling a garden * tilling a flower garden * fertilizing what was going to be a garden and is now going to be a flower garden * re-staining the deck * starting a small flooring patch repair in the bathroom, which turns into a massive "this floor, and wall, needs to be replaced right now" project * put in a swing set for the kids * re-anchor the swing set, because the kids played on it before the cement anchors set * fix the fence the swing set fell on
You'll get plenty of exercise, I guaran-fucking-tee it.:) I lost all my body fat and still gained weight.
And no, I don't regret a minute of it. But, working a long way from home right now, I certainly miss it.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree on population, except...politicians have made so many promises to deliver goodies to future citizens, that failure to grow population will literally cause a revolution when the money runs out as the the population seriously slows or sinks. Hence the desire by some politicians to want to let in foreigners without going through any supervised immigration process.
This is precisely what's happening in the West with state-run healthcare and poverty assistance.
The endemic population in the West has been shrinking for roughly 20 years now, with growth rates slowing markedly since around the 1980s. As affluence goes up, birth rates go down. In order for a welfare state to not collapse under the burden of its own weight it must have a perpetually increasing population. This is why most Western countries now have an "immigration problem" which is largely ignored and/or accepted, despite the social ills it causes in turn.
Since these governments depend upon a Ponzi scheme for their continued existence, a revolution may not be such a bad idea for everyone involved (including the immigrants).
If you have a problem with population density, please. See: Muslim countries, China, and India. The endemic population in the West and Russia has been dropping steadily (and in some cases, rapidly) for the past 20 years. For instance, at the current rate, Italy and Russia will have no significant 'native Italians' or 'native Russians' left within several generations (both under a birth rate of 1.0 per female).
In real life we have millions of years; because somewhere between 50 and 200 it'll become increasingly uneconomical to extract said fossil fuels such that alternatives are actually cheaper. The first it's likely to happen to is oil. In 50 years we're likely to let most of it sit in the ground because pulling it out is too expensive except for certain scientific testing.
And in 50 years, they will cap the wells they are using un-cap the previously capped wells which weren't producing as rapidly as they had, and start using them again for another 50+ years. There are more wells capped (which will likely produce again at higher yields than previously) today than there are wells in use.
You are seeing a marked decrease in environmental interest. Look at China and India.
You're not exactly helping your cause there, buddy. Do we also have rare earth, iron, salt, etc. shortages? No, not really. This is, well, China and India we're talking about, here. China and India are using those, too. What we have is a shortage of cheap oil, which is a significantly different situation largely because China and India are ramping up their industrialization.
And, again, it's China and India, home of the largest slave/slum/underclass populations in the world for the past several millennia, where disposal of human waste in the streets is still common and accepted.
Like wind turbines, hydro power is kind of a dead end. It requires a lot of effort to maintain and only really makes much sense on the scale where you are really harming the environment around it.
Not true.
This may be true for the larger hydro installations around the world, but it it is by no means true of them all. I know it's true for the Three Gorges dam in China (partially due to how they operate it, but that's China for you), and may be true for other dams, such as Hoover which has a very high flowrate at its spillway, through the tail water.
Yes, constructing and initiating a hydroelectric dam will be 'destructive' to the environment around it. It doesn't harm the environment, though: it changes it. It's arguably much less destructive than a naturally occurring spillway. You may know them as waterfalls.
Additionally, dam construction can help environmental diversity. It doesn't necessarily hurt it. A river prone to seasonal flooding and land destruction (as occurred annually prior to the construction of the US dam system along the Missouri and Mississipi) can have the spring surges regulated to reduce the number and frequency of actual flooding along its length. Those dams can be converted to produce hydroelectric power where they are not already doing so - and there are quite a few of them which are still just dams.
Ecological benefits (change, not destruction) from dams is pretty significant. It creates more marshland acreage (always a diverse habitat of wildlife), provides more variety in waterways, reduces river-length erosion, and so on. The hydroelectric potential of a dam is almost all a bonus. Dams are a good idea if you want to live anywhere near a major river or have periodic seasonal flooding of any sort.
Consider, for a second: the New York Reservoir System has something close to a trillion gallons of water. These are all resevoirs - man made lakes on natural water sources (natural springs, rivers) which have been in use for over 100 years at this point. They don't (as far as I know) harness hydroelectric, they've just got a dozen or so spillways per lake (depending on size). That is a lot of wasted power which, while not significant on the grander scale, would help none the less.
There are many areas which would benefit substantially from hydroelectric power, simply because it would provide them with the excuse of derming their rivers and making a reservoir with a dam they could seasonally regulate - which happens to produce hydroelectric.
Hydro-electric is, per kWh, very cheap. The majority of the state of South Dakota is powered by a the 4 hydro dams on the Missouri river, the Oahe being the largest. We pay half (or less) the power rate of places like California. As of 2011 it was still something like .06$ per kWh (it's gone up a bit due to being sold out of state, I believe). While the initial construction of a dam is surely very expensive, it's a very wise long-term investment.
It's entirely possible that their vulnerability could be fixed and they end up with nothing they can use for a while
Not really. Most cell phones don't get updates, and even when they do they don't have all the fixes or a very fast turnaround. Mobile phone security is still very 1990s.
Meanwhile, you can now piece together a PC from 5-year-old parts from the garage and have a PC that's capable of playing games better than the 360.
You're forgetting that the 360 was meh for hardware when it came out. A $400 PC will run circles around it today, as will a $400 PC from several years ago.
Are you serious?
Managers will then end up with cowardly people with no skills who will lie to them when the job is 30% done but they're not going to work on it anymore, they're behind schedule, or it looks done to the uninitiated but hasn't actually been completed.
If you're telling your employees to do things in a specific timeframe, you'd better have a damn good reason for doing so - like being able to do so yourself. Managers should only ask how long it takes, and then tell them "Make it so", with there being absolutely no ground for deviation from this rule unless the employer/boss knows what the fuck they're talking about (BTDT).
Agree 150%.
I've never had a hands-off manager. The direct ones are idiots and don't listen. Honestly, I've found that things have generally run better when my bosses haven't been around, to the concensus of everyone.
Agreed -sorta. The female bosses are more likely to hold a grudge, more likely to mistreat people on how much they "like" them and not actual performance, and show favorites. The direct, no-nonsense, to-the-point technical person does not work well with these people as their bosses.
The male bosses are more likely to be demanding and imperial, but they're also a lot more concise and to the point as to what they want. They'll take you standing toe/toe, but you better be able and willing to hold your own. Submissive, non-assertive types are seen as under-performers regardless of what they actually do.
However, I've had a boss with a hormonal imbalance. He was growing tits involuntarily, and horribly moody. He behaved more like a woman (and a very poor boss at that).
Granted, I should note that I've never actually had a good boss (but I hear they really do exist). But I guess that's probably par for the course.
Well, compared to... pretty much everyone.
Every single NATO-organized operation has not only been a significant failure, but human rights violations have been atrocious. This is more true with the smaller operations involving soldiers from non-Western countries in other non-Western countries. Complete... cluster... fuck.
MS lost a golden opportunity here to emphasize the "why", whether true or not. "We don't want you to buy their products because they're overpriced and are not good use of company assets".
They're missing one important entry: hard drive clatter. Sure, you can still hear it if you get close to the tower, or have a particular brand of drives (eg. Hitachi) which aren't as aggressively acoustically tuned.
Surely I'm not the only one who remembers being able to hear their drive(s) from the other side of the room as the machine boots up? Today's workstations positively whisper, in comparison - to the point where many people don't realize that's a device inside doing something, but just 'phantom noises'. With SSDs becoming more common, it won't be long until hard drives are relegated to the server rooms and geek dwellings.
I did what you did with MC2 as well. I seem to recall the first game had the same 'flaw'. I also had a Madcat poster (that I had screen printed myself) in my room as a teen (the CD cover from Mechwarrior II). I wonder what ever happened to that... The game intro movie to Mechwarrior 2 was the single biggest determining factor in making me a computer geek, sad to say. It was that cool, and probably more influential in my life than losing my virginity.
Believe it or not, you could do some serious damage against even the mighty Timberwolf/Madcat/MkII with something like, oh, a small body omnimech. Or even something like the Uller or Nova - they were absolutely vicious with the right pilot and terrain. I would play vs. against a good friend who would consistently beat me with the small, fast mechs regardless of what I used, and would basically decimate the Assault class mechs without me even seeing him. It was all strategy and playing the field for what it was, with human/human multiplayer.
Hell, even a Thor with the right armaments was pretty useful. Not quite as maneuverable, but the firepower you could pack in the 'missile pod' and its armor capabilities made it a good contender (as long as you could keep your back to the wall).
Bushwackers and their big brother caldronborn were pretty damn good at ambushes. They could punch a really hard hit right off with ER lasers, especially if you were teaming with someone with jammers (eg. someone with a vulture and a lot of armor)
She's obviously way below your standards,
Yes. I don't care how nice her tits are or how well she does certain things. If she's a bitch, I won't even let her make me a sandwich.
STOP! Can't touch this. It's hot.
This is going to blow up big, for both MS and TuCloud, I think. Considering the obvious intent Microsoft has with pushing Windows 8 as a service instead of a product (as they're already doing with Office 365 and will be tying the next version of Exchange), they're probably going to try to lock any competition out.
I'd not be surprised if OnLive is a project planned internally to Microsoft, and they moved it "outside" to avoid scrutiny and/or Justice Dept. probes, or something like that. The "offer" they'll give OnLive is to become a part of Microsoft, or something like it - and it'll have been planned since before OnLive first broke soil.
I trust my own vigilance and concern for my own well being more than I trust that of:
* bankers
* recent immigrants with questionable training working on servers
* others who might profit from my data or selling anything about me
While I agree with you, a little perspective.
I've seen systems, verified backups, and duplicate backups simply fall over. Every best practice was followed, backups were taken regularly, and the backups had been verified by Industry Leading Backup Software Everyone Still Uses (arg). But the system and data on the backups could not be restored.
It eventually got fixed through some virtualized gyrations, but it took the better part of a week for the company's top engineer to figure it out.
Shit happens.
I recently heard of a case of a sysadmin who wrote some software. He worked from home, and naturally, the software didn't directly pertain to his position. He worked a lot of overtime for his job, but because he was salaried as a sysadmin, he didn't get OT pay.
Well, the company thought it should own his software, too. So they took it from him at threat of termination.
He then took them to court for 3 years of back overtime plus interest. Considering what he'd been making and how much he was working, it was supposedly quite a lot (almost 4 figures). Because they considered his programming to be their's, the court saw fit that he wasn't truly to be classified as 'administrative' staff, and got lumped in with some CA classification allowing him overtime.
(It may not be true, but it is a good story.)
Honestly for me, the hardest part was telling family and friends, "yeah, I'm working from home, but that doesn't mean I'm not working," and getting them to accept that they can't just pop by whenever.
Then don't tell them you're working from home. Tell them you're a contractor. Contractors, for the most part, are respected as having deadlines, and (importantly) need to account for their time fiscally. It's a small distinction, but IMO working in IT is more akin to salary contractor work than it is typical salaried work. You're always behind the gun...
Just so there's some perspective:
I am much, much more effective if I'm somewhat physically active throughout the day. Unfortunately, much of what I have to do involves sitting in a chair with ssh and an editor in front of me.
In my current job, this could be somewhat remedied, as I do have tasks in the server room. However, in the time it'd take me to get there, whatever I'm waiting for back at my desk has long since completed, meaning: something like slashdot seems more appealing.
My most productive time has been at home in my basement. My workstation is 20 feet from my workbench and 10 feet from my server closet. Another 20 feet on from my workbench is the laundry, where I could get most of everything washed, dried, and folded (my wife loved that, except I cant' fold clothes to save my life). By the time my file transfer(s), install, whatever completed, I could be back at my desk, having completed other tasks. Come 5pm, I can get up and go relax (or, likely, start another project): the chores are done, my work is done, and nothing else is pressing.
I don't recommend doing vehicle work mid-day on a work day, however. That hour long oil change turns into "I'll just get her up on the jack and rotate the tires while I'm at it" and before you know it you've broken a part and need to borrow the wife's car to get to the auto store. :P
My god. I may be speaking before my turn here ( as I may be working from home with children and a wife soon), but I'd say what those guys needed was a divorce, not to stay in an office to work.
When I was home (working a long way from there now, sadly - trying to get back), I had quite the nice setup. I had full run of the basement in our (smaller) home.
In one quarter of it, I had my workstation. I had my desk, which I'd made some time previously, a nice office chair (something cheap, but it fit me well), and a lazy boy recliner. I had a small sound-insulated closet where all my home server equipment sat, which was just next to the workstation.
In another corner, I had my workshop. I had/have everything here, from a drill press and bench vice with all the appropriate tools to an electronics test bench.
In yet another corner (subdivided by doorless walls) I had an 'empty room'. It's been in need of renovation for years and has basically become a shop. I did some vehicle body work in the room 2 winters ago.
If I got tired of sitting at the computer (distracted) I'd get up and work with metal, wood, or electronics (or prep for one of the many household projects I had elsewhere, upstairs). I could move whatever i was working on to the 'empty' room if it was too large to complete on the bench.
The best part was that I could hear my kids running and playing overhead, letting me know it was probably time for me to come out of my cave and breath some fire into their daily lives. After things were settled for the evening, I could go back down into the basement and do one thing or another. Probably the most productive year of my life, so far.
Or, buy an older house.
Seriously. This is more true if you're married.
Within weeks of signing the papers, you will find yourself doing one (or more) of the following:
* laying stone or bricks
* tilling a garden
* tilling a flower garden
* fertilizing what was going to be a garden and is now going to be a flower garden
* re-staining the deck
* starting a small flooring patch repair in the bathroom, which turns into a massive "this floor, and wall, needs to be replaced right now" project
* put in a swing set for the kids
* re-anchor the swing set, because the kids played on it before the cement anchors set
* fix the fence the swing set fell on
You'll get plenty of exercise, I guaran-fucking-tee it. :) I lost all my body fat and still gained weight.
And no, I don't regret a minute of it. But, working a long way from home right now, I certainly miss it.